6 Tips for Perfect Portioning #GiveUpBinningFood

Hand’s up, who else is terrible at gauging how much pasta to cook, how many potatoes will feed the family and how much rice is needed? Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been cooking regularly since I was 12, and I am still rubbish at measuring out these ingredients by eye! I either make way too much or far too little. There’s no in between.

It’s a good thing we love leftovers in our house! I rely on my digital scales to weigh out nearly everything. This helps prevent food waste, and it also helps me keep track of what I’m eating so that I don’t pile on the pounds!

This week, for the 40-day Give Up Binning Food challenge for Lent with Love Food Hate Waste, we’re sharing our top tips to working out correct portions because enough is enough. Bigger is not always better. In fact, it’s very much the opposite when it comes to food. Food waste is heavily impacted by the lure of ‘bigger’. It starts with overbuying as we fall for the endless, seemingly good value supermarket deals; continues in the kitchen with portioning errors during cooking; and ends with oversized meals that we just can’t finish. I’m reminded of my grandfather’s observation that ‘my eyes were bigger than my belly’ at the dinner table. As a result, we throw out lots of perfectly good food which could have been avoided with just a bit more thought. The key is understanding when enough is… enough.

10 TIPS FOR PERFECT PORTIONING

An average single portion of spaghetti should easily be able to fill up the space of a one penny coin. This weighs between 70-80 grams for dried (100-110 grams for fresh pasta) per person. Have you cooked too much pasta? No worries, simply rinse with cold water and freeze! Or, why not use it up in a Spaghetti Carbonara Frittata.

An average single portion of rice is measured by filling a small yogurt pot with uncooked rice. Alternatively, weigh out between 60-90 grams, depending on how hungry you are. Alternatively, if you’re pressed for time, pre-packaged rice portions are very convenient. Leftover rice is incredibly versatile, I like mine in a Korean Beef Bibimbap (the perfect recipe for using up fridge leftovers!).

A single portion of protein, like chicken breast or bolognese sauce, is about the size of your palm. Use up leftover chicken in a Creamy Chicken Pasta Bake, or freeze for later. Leftover bolognese freezes well for a quick midweek meal.

Dinner parties are often over-catered. Ask your friends to help themselves in a buffet style party instead of serving platefuls as they can decide what they want to eat, and in what quantities. Offer guests little take-home portions from the leftover food. It’s both generous and practical too.

Smaller plates mean smaller eating portions. It’s better to go for seconds than to throw out food from your plate that you couldn’t finish. This helps with the waistline too, as a smaller plate gives the illusion of a larger meal.

Check out the latest Love Food Hate Waste video below on portioning with Liberty London Girl for some more fantastic tips! Don’t forget to subscribe to theLove Food Hate Waste newsletter too to have food waste prevention tips and tricks delivered straight to your inbox every week!

The six-week long food waste prevention #GiveUpBinningFood campaign running throughout Lent is broken down into weekly themes to help make reducing food waste at home a more attainable goal. These themes are:

JOIN US WITH THE NO WASTE FOOD CHALLENGE!

I challenge you, dear reader, to share your own recipes and tips to help prevent food waste! You don’t have to have a blog to enter, simply let me know your recipe or suggestion in the comments below and fill out the Rafflecopter form. You can share an image of your dish, if you like, on Twitter as an extra entry option. Tag me @tangoraindrop and use the hashtag #nowastefoodchallenge to help spread the word! I will include a selection of my favourites in next month’s round-up, where we’ll get to do the challenge all over again! Bloggers – link up with the linky tool, as usual, to be included in the roundup – click here for the full No Waste Food Challenge rules. If you want to enter the giveaway, leave a comment and enter via the Rafflecopter form.

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This giveaway is open to UK entries only. Entrants must be age 18 or over. The winner will need to respond within 30 days of being contacted; failure to do this may result in another winner being selected.

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If you need some help using Rafflecopter, here’s a quick clip to show you how. Rafflecopter will pick the winner at random from all the entries received. I will be verifying entries. Any automated entries or those who have claimed they have made the mandatory blog post comment and really haven’t will be disqualified. It’s mandatory! Please make sure your comment is eight words or longer or Google views it as spam and this negatively affects my spam score. All entries with comments fewer than the mandatory 8 words will be disqualified and deleted.

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I hate throwing stuff away and as a result I used to massively over eat… I’d rather eat it than bin it! Obviously that isn’t a good solution either… so now I plan my meals and weigh out the correct portions of rice pasta potato etc. I throw out far less… and now I weigh far less too!

It’s tough. There’s only 2 of us. Most recipes and meals you buy are designed for more. I’ve started ‘cooking for 4’ if that’s what recipes call for. That way we can eat half and freeze the other half for another meal.

I’m busy so a 1 meal a day sort of person so big meal works for me. S isn’t, she has her breakfast and lunch so i have to be careful not to go too large with her portion.

Cooking from scratch helps if you can tailor recipes, that way you can measure effectively.

We visit a pan asian place and you take a ramekin, fill it with veg, then do the same with protein, then do the same with rice. That has drifted into our kitchen when cooking that type of meal.

Whatever dish I’m making I simply imagine all the ingredients indivicually on a person’s plate and I find it reasonably easy to get the portions right, remembering that pasta approximately doubles when cooked and rice triples in volume.

I’m not sure how useful my tips are because it’s just guesswork for me but for portioning things like pasta, cereal, rice etc I use a handful or half/full mug depending on the item. I also try and make my plates as colourful as possible with plenty of veg!

I don’t stop myself having any of my favourite foods, I just make sure that the proportions are in favor of the healthier stuff, for example having one less sausage and extra carrots to make up for it.

Planning meals ahead is vital. I only shop once a week with a lit and stick to it. But then half way through the week, sometimes plans change as to who is in / out for meals, and so I can recalculate what’s needed and freeze any surplus to requirements.

I always take the suggested portion size on a packet (rice, noodles etc) and up it a little. I always weigh portions, knowing if we only need portions for dinner,or if I need extra portions for next day’s packed lunch. This ensures aren’t over-eating and not wasting either!

I have a special teacup for measuring out rice and use the trick of the hole in the middle of the spaghetti spatula to measure out spaghetti. Most other things I’ve gotten used to doing by sight and we rarely have any leftovers.

left over pasta – put in fridge when cold and rather than leave, add peppers, cucumber etc. in small chopped pieces and stir through mayo and grated cheese. A great little salad to have the following day 🙂

As I work shifts, I often go to Boots and buy their meal deals. the calorie content is on there, its the right portion size for a healthy diet and it helps me eat well and carefully without overdoing it. its so easy to binge when you are on the go!

I always buy bigger packs of food because they are cheaper & then I split them up into containers or food bags depending on what I need to freeze. After finding some UFO’s (Unidentified Frozen Objects) I now always label what they are 🙂 x

Love the tip about the penny coin and spaghetti. I always cook a little less pasta, rice, etc per person than a packet suggests. The portions stipulated seem really quite large. I also quite often serve meals (like tagines or casseroles) in my stripey Cornishware bowls – the portions are smaller than on my dinner plates but no one seems to notice!

Hi firstly I found your video very interesting never knew how to portion a serving of spaghetti and Rice as a lady that loves my food and trying to loose weight this is a very handy tip that will be used from now on, as for me giving you a tip I Use a smaller plates a standard-sized portion will look small on a larger plate, making you feel dissatisfied as a lady that has had gastric surgery I find this ideal but I also use this system for all of my family helping them to loose weight to and having less waste no complaints as yet

This is really useful! I find it hard to portion up food at times, particularly as my daughter’s appetite can vary a lot! I generally try and give her a small portion to start with and then there is more if she wants it, and if not it is saved for lunch the next day. Hopefully it means a little less waste!

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